GUNS N' ROSES, MISGUIDED, and WHY I DON'T LIKE CHRISTMAS

photo © 1989 Heather Harris. All Rights Reserved.

It was the end of the 1980's, my most lucrative decade of photographic work. Hair metal, post-punk and proto-grunge had been very, very good to me. But life events caught up with me bigtime in the last dwindling days of the decade. My graphic art business was sued and taxed out of existence by the California State Board of Equalization, who had decided that drawing art was a quantifiable product, not a service (how many yards of art would you like, sir?) My favorite cousin was diagnosed with AIDS, a death sentence then which indeed ensued. My beloved grandfather died on my birthday. My favorite local colleague and friend Suzan Carson (she did the Kill City Iggy and James Williamson pix, see LINK) died of cancer on Christmas Eve. And my close friend in England Shelley Benoit, the one who had introduced my better half and me 20 years prior to this, died on Christmas day of a completely preventable medical accident in hospital in Cornwall.

To say I was reeling in my psyche would have been an understatement. One's first flurry of personal deaths is usually the hardest. Post Christmas, I did not go to sleep for 5 days and nights in a row, 80% harrowing emotional inertia, 20% "other" (it was the 1980's and I did work in the music business.)

Then metal group Misguided, whom I had photographed in my studio, invited me to photograph their well-publicized debut at the Whisky. I noticed someone from the Group of the Hour, Guns n' Roses, hanging off the front of the stage like some kid at Altamont, a very unusual display of musical fandom from a ridiculously timely superstar. I don't normally corner stars a la paparazzo, but I felt that my clients would love a photo of themselves with the Guns guy, and he just might have enjoyed their set enough to be approachable.

So I did. At first he made a sign of the cross to get the vampire away, and then it hit me. Having been up for 5 days and nights straight, I looked like Keith Richards, the living dead, the hills have eyes, army of darkness, tales from the crypt and all decadent rock stars rolled into one, which is to say I looked like complete hell, which is to say I looked like "one of us" to the Guns' n' Roses guitarist. Who amiably said "yes."

So above is my backstage photo of Izzy Stradlin with 3 of the 4 members of Misguided. And the first paragraph should be self-explanatory as to why I don't exactly celebrate Christmas. At the Fastfilm and Mr. Twister residence during the holidays there is no tree, there are no decorations, just presents for friends to cherish the ones that are still alive.

There's a photo of Suzan Carson at LINK. Below, Mr. Twister, Shelley Benoit and yours truly in London and Warwick, England, autumn, 1978

KATEY SAGAL singing

photo (C) Heather Harris. All rights reserved. Katey Sagal, pre-Married With Children, pre-Lost, pre-Sons of Anarchy, singing at the Palomino, North Hollywood, California with Jimmy Wood, god knows when. However, I do recall that she was singing "Hey Gyp" as Donovan recorded the song (also known as "Chevrolet" by its writers The Jim Kweskin Jug Band and also when covered by a solo Maria Muldaur, whose voice Sagal's somewhat resembles albeit bluesier.) A legitimate working vocalist, Ms. Sagal also was tapped by Bette Midler to sing backup as a "Harlette" for their 1979 tour.

Above, Jimmy Wood still rocking on harp 9.8.11 live with the Michael Des Barres Band.

SONIC YOUTH LIVE

Photo (C) 1991 Heather Harris. Sonic Youth live. Great band, great people. Their boutique label Ecstatic Peace signed and released 2 cds by my fave newish band Awesome Color (LINK.)

SHE ROK poster

SHE ROK, guess what era! This was one of my friend Mary Kay's metal bands during a hiatus from The Dogs ( She Rok are also depicted in a previous blog herein.) This was my proposal for a poster for them, based upon my studio portrait. I hand drew in the logo and the lightning bolts, as one did in those distant eons before digital manipulation...

PAUL McCARTNEY at the GRAMMY'S, 1993

photo (C) 1993 Heather Harris. Paul McCartney at the 1993 Grammy's with his special award. Pack/group photography, which I hated because everyone gets the same photo. At least the subject tried to make it graphically interesting with this gesture, and the shadow he cast, kept with fill flash, made it even more so.

JAMES WILLIAMSON PHOTO GALLERY POSTED

A gallery of our whole photo session is posted HERE on the

James Williamson website.

TRACII GUNS, RIOT BRIDES et MOI

For Halloween, phenomenal guitarist Tracii Guns emotes in L.A. Guns on Oct. 24th, bassist Erin Soriano embraces the holiday spirit at the same gig in her band Riot Brides, and I appear from 41 years ago, the one in front with the undead stare and black & white hair.

PHOTO SHOOT WITH JAMES WILLIAMSON 9.23.09

I photographed James Williamson in Iggy and The Stooges live in 1973 at the Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood, with my pics published in The L.A. Weekly News, Performance, and some thirty years later, Britain's MOJO magazine. I was lucky enough to have been introduced to the Stooges' onslaught as it was first erupting by the same individual who introduced David Bowie to the band themselves. Comparatively few outside the group's native Midwest and pockets of L.A., S.F., and NYC proved sufficiently enlightened to have appreciated the Stooges during their first rocket blast ride around. Now they'll play to a festival of 30,000 in Brazil next month.

The Stooges (originals) and Iggy And The Stooges (James' incarnation) have always been my personal "go to" music (I can't bring myself to denote "happy place" with music this hellbent, but although my tastes are eclectic and demeanor low-key, I have a wild heart.) Hence a photo session with James Williamson nascent at the return to his legendary band for a "Raw Power" reunion after thirty-eight years was much anticipated fun.

James' music means a lot to a lot of people as well, so I wanted something a little different than what's been done already old or new. He looks great in person, so that was easy to get across. One addresses the thirty-eight year absence from the spotlight by making sure his recognizable star quality comes through to jog fans' memory of him onstage. One day in the 1970's he was the hotshot guitarist who most influenced the future of all the hard rock genres, cut, print, wrap and flash-forward to 2009 when he was a retiring Vice President of Sony Corporation, Division of Technology Standards and IEEE board member. (I had to ask my niece, who lives where his family and he live and works in his same field, exactly what it was that he did.)(And he's her new hero.) The artist's story is both fascinating and unique in rock for his top-of-his-field successes in two such separate lines of work, as if Jeff Beck morphed into Steve Jobs, but those ruminations are for another day, with a lot more fact-checking.

I wanted a warm but edgy look, which meant directional light with specific shadows, and the warm browns overall to emphasize his best feature noted from his prior pics, his intense eyes. I brought in an A List (private to the stars' homes) hairstylist, but no makeup. The red contrasting fresnel light matched two of the three guitars he brought. The lighting and asymmetric shadows in this setup were deliberate, bringing up what was wanted with other elements receding. James must think I'm a mute, because I don't give a lot of directions to people who know what they're doing. And top talent do. That way the result is about the natural bearing of the subject rather than the vanity of the photographer as a pose manipulator (unless that's what the subjects specify they want. I'm easy.) Being referential to what audiences remember from onstage appearances plus star quality within the artifice of the studio was the desired combination for the portrait above.


Photo: Kurt Ingham

YOUNG, TROUBLED LOVE

I watched a short dvd of my 17-year-old self the other day, a student film made by my brother. It made me ponder the first passions of youth, all jumbled up in arrogance vs. insecurities, inexpressiveness despite all other exuberantly compulsive outpourings, and unrequited longing even in fulfillment. You're never going to see it via me, as my leading man (actually the Bane of my adolescence) and I are seen doing unseemly things.

So here are three romantic Youtube offerings, songs contemporary to that time encapsulating same. Note that even these skilled young songwriters occasionally sputtered with tongue-tied inarticulateness when confronting real feelings. Considering that my wild heart preferred hardest rock then and now, these three ballads really snared something in me. Special attention to masterful, psychological archaetypes of contemplative, adolescent love in the first one, sample lyrics, "...somewhere a mountain is moving, 'afraid it's moving without me...go ahead and find her, just close my eyes and she'll be there..." Ignore the graphics of the second two, turn up the sound, enjoy and recall your 17-year-old self in troubled love.


( sung here by Dusty Springfield, written by the Rascals)

FLEETWOOD MAC REHEARSAL circa 1975

photo (C) 1975 Heather Harris. A rehearsal (obviously, as Ms. Nicks did not perform onstage with her poodle dog) at the old Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood. Herbert Worthington took the eventual platinum LP band photos in the loo of same that day. By request, I expounded more on the circumstances of this photograph for the Stevie Nicks fan page, click HERE